IRISH REPUBLICAN NEWS: Watch the DUP take a hard right to outdo the TUV

Watch the DUP take a hard right to outdo the TUV

By Brian Feeney (for the Irish News)

For the DUP there’s only one figure that jumps out of the elections,
local and European, and it’s not the 131,000 odd that their uninspiring
European candidate polled. No, the figure that liquefies their bowels is
75,806, the vote that their nemesis Jim Allister polled. The DUP tried
to cover it up by staging in breach of etiquette an unmannerly premature
performance of roaring and cheering at the count on Monday evening
pretending their candidate had been elected a day before her
declaration. The smiles were false, the cheering hollow. Oh yes, the
official DUP line is that Allister’s share of the vote was down from 13
per cent in 2009 to 12 this time. Thirteen schmirteen. The ordinary
punter sees only 75,000 votes.

Allister is here to stay. His TUV party got 13 councillors. He took
greatest pleasure in winning seats in the DUP heartland of Bannside,
which as he woundingly reminded a loud-mouthed Ian Og is the name his
father took for his peerage. Allister is now a player. He can’t be
ignored in any attempt to create a unionist pact for the 2015 general
election. Why, he might even decide to stand in east Belfast himself.
Heh heh. What price Gavin Robinson at the bookies then?

The TUV will win seats in the 2016 assembly. In all likelihood he will
deprive the DUP of the position of First Minister which, thanks to DUP
hubris in 2006 St Andrews Agreement, goes to the leader of the largest
party. Three TUV seats should ensure that’s Sinn Fein.

Allister is simply the most able and articulate result of the stupidity
and cowardice of the DUP leadership since the 2011 Assembly elections.
Confronted with rivals on their right they committed the cardinal
political error of trying to outdo them on the right. They took to the
streets to participate in UVF/PUP orchestrated fleggery. Senior figures
of the party shared platforms with known UVF men. DUP councillors and
assembly members indulged in incoherent, ungrammatical imitations of Jim
Allister’s rhetoric. What was their reward? The TUV took a seat in the
Shankill and the PUP took the seat of the DUP leader in Belfast City
Council. Allister got 75,000 votes. Smart eh?

Do you think the DUP leaders will have learnt a lesson? Not a bit of it.
They’ll engage in a Gadarene stampede further right frantically trying
to outdo Allister so that the unionist electorate will conclude that
Allister is correct as both Robinson and the hapless Nesbitt are sucked
into his orbit howling at the moon.

On the other side of the fence, the stupendous success of Sinn Fein in
the south and their effortless superiority in The North – sweeping in on
the first count in the Euro election – only serves to reinforce Unionist
paranoia. You could see that immediately in the defensive political
foetal position automatically adopted by the less than quick-witted
Edwin Poots when asked about Sinn Fein’s Southern triumph. We don’t
care, we’re in the UK. Makes no difference. Michelle Gildernew pointed
out it might if he’s dealing with a Sinn Fein minister of health in the
North-South Ministerial Council.

You can see where this is all leading. Apartheid in unionist-controlled
councils such as Lisburn and Castlereagh and Mid and East Antrim,
continuing deadlock at Stormont, but more immediately no prospect of any
agreement on parades and the past as each Unionist fragment tries to
out-Allister the others. Don’t look to Dublin or London for both
governments have reason to be concerned about their own survival until
the designated date for their general elections in 2015 and 2016.

One thing you can be sure of is that in the British general election, if
there is such a species as liberal Unionist, the DUP, UUP and TUV will
ensure that no evidence of such a species can emerge in the voting.
Unionist parties are all now right wing and far right wing.

Meanwhile, who will be the new Dublin minister of foreign affairs now
that the unlamented Gilmore has gone? At least Gilmore was consistent on
the north for 40 years. You could say he had the wrong end of the Stick!